260 



The Garden Magazine, January, 1922 



ably nothing better than paper that is ruled both ways in 

 squares about an eighth of an inch in diameter. This may be 

 obtained very cheaply at a stationer's. If you can allow four 

 of these squares — a square quarter inch — for each square foot 

 of the garden you can locate plantings pretty accurately. 



With things decided on, and the plan of the garden accur- 

 ately recorded on paper, advantage should be taken of the 

 first suitable weather conditions to stake the real garden, that 

 is, to begin building from the garden plan by driving a marking 

 stake for the features shown on the paper. In the vegetable 

 garden, the end of each row is indicated. By this method plant- 

 ing in any place that the plan provides for can be done whenever 

 the material arrives. 



But long before this work is to be done the catalogues will be 

 coming in. Get as many of them as you can, and study them 

 all. Don't hunt for cheap seed or cheap nursery stock, but buy 

 of houses of good standing and get their best quality. Where a 

 dealer makes a speciality of any variety or particular group, buy 

 of him. As long as he is specializing he is likely to keep up his 

 standard of quality. 



In the meantime there are many other things to do. The 

 gardener who does not learn something from his papers and 

 books during the winter has neglected his opportunities. It is 

 well to review your reading material, and more than once if 

 opportunity offers — for even if you have studied everything 

 carefully a re-reading will nearly always remind you of some- 

 thing you had forgotten. Sometimes, too, you will come across 

 information that will explain what appeared to be a very mys- 

 terious happening in last summer's garden and will thus be 

 prepared to prevent or remedy a similar occurrence. 



FLOWER PAINTERS THAT REALLY PAINT FLOWERS 



THE gardener with sufficient humor to over balance any 

 ensuing exasperation can find considerable amusement in a 

 review of past and present-day "flower paintings," which are 

 (with a few conspicuous exceptions) not paintings of flowers at 

 all but chiefly daubs of color, massed or scattered, and as such 

 tickling the spectator's fancy — or otherwise — according to his 

 mental mood and his taste in hues. 



Why, the gardener wonders, have flowers been so largely 

 abandoned to the school miss and other indolent dabblers in 

 aquarelle? Surely subjects so lovely, so individual, often so 

 miraculously unrepeatable are worthy of the serious consider- 

 ation, the accurate portraiture accorded the animal kingdom. 

 What painter would want or dare to present a three-legged dog 

 or a man with two noses and feel the atrocity justified because he 

 had incidentally achieved some magnificent colour effects? 

 An inconceivable absurdity! Yet how often is the plant world 

 so victimized ! 



The explanation may be, after all, rather a simple one— the 

 artist is normally — perhaps necessarily — a restless, rootless 

 city-dweller, seeking nature in her emotional moods on moun- 

 tain tops and along the sea, unfamiliar with the pregnant 

 quietude of gardens where miracles unfold day by day for 

 patient eyes that will watch and wait. And when it comes to 

 the matter of portraiture Mrs. Vander-ash can always refuse 

 her check if the portrait doesn't please, whereas the only form 

 of protest possible to Mrs. Tiger-lily is to slide silently away 

 from under the offending brush and off the canvas alto- 

 gether. 



Fortunately, however, for the grower of flowers in particular 

 and the lover of truth in general, things are on the mend ! How 

 heartening to find that Ben Foster (Winter Exhibition of The 

 National Academy of Design, December, 1921,) has taken to 

 painting Marigolds! What a glowing greeting they threw across 

 the wide, bare spaces of the gallery, what a soul-warming greeting 

 after wall upon wall of all sorts of pictures with "nary" a real 

 flower among them — though, to be sure, Petunias were several 

 times hinted at. Intelligently and sympathetically rendered in 

 the rich, low-pitched range of color that characterizes Mr. 



Foster's landscapes, these Marigolds and sprays of purple-blue 

 Larkspur were "sure enough" blossoms, grown perhaps in Mr. 

 Foster's own garden, known and understood by him at any 

 rate. 



Truth may be told in as many ways as there are men to tell 

 it — it does not impose hampering limitations but rather furnishes 

 a fundamental inspiration which may be variously interpreted 

 Frank Galsworthy with his airier medium, more precise manner, 

 and a palette less rich but more brilliant, portrays the Marigold 

 in quite other and quite as genuine fashion — a fact self evident 

 to all gardeners so fortunate as to have seen Mr. Galsworthy's 

 paintings either last season or this. 



READERS of The Garden Magazine will have an opportu- 

 nity to determine for themselves the merit not only of Mr. 

 Galsworthy's recent work — of which a happy example will be 

 found on our February cover — but of some of the other moderns 

 as well who are turning toward this branch of painting the skill 

 and experience hitherto largely focussed in other fields. Carle 

 J. Blenner is now painting flowers with all the sincerity and force 

 he formerly put into the portraiture of people and is markedly 

 successful in this, for him, comparatively new venture to which 

 he brings a trained perception in matters artistic and an ap- 

 preciative perception of the personality of flowers. We feel 

 ourselves in luck to have secured a lovely, glowing bouquet by 

 Mr. Blenner for our March issue — a happy assurance that 

 flower painting has been lifted by competent hands out of the 

 lap of the lazy, and that flowers are inheriting a rightful dignity 

 in the realm of art. 



THE OPE^C OLUM: K, 



Readers' Interchange of Experience and Comment 



When to Make Carnation Cuttings 



To the Editor of The Garden Magazine: 



THE best time to take Carnation cuttings is, 1 find, around the end 

 of December or the first week in January. Then comes a period 

 of dull, damp weather and the sand of the propagation bench will not 

 dry out readily. Indeed, the first wetting of the sand is often all that is 

 necessary until the slips are rooted. Thus the danger from "damping 

 off" is reduced to a minimum. Around mid-January the sun begins 

 to get stronger and it is therefore more difficult to get a good strike of 

 rooted Carnations at that time. — J. J. Deehan, Bryn Mawr, Pa. 



Delphiniums That Dress in Yellow 



To the Editor of The Garden Magazine: 



IN ANSWER to Mr. Hinckley's query as to Delphinium Zalil, I had it 

 in bloom last summer from seed planted in the house late the spring 

 before. Would doubtless do better in frames if one has them. I had 

 eleven plants from a packet of seed. When transplanted — the soil is 

 clay near an outcropping of limestone — in late summer the roots re- 

 sembled carrots of an inch length. They disappeared soon, but all 

 came up in the spring and four bloomed. The best one was more than 

 two feet tall, branched low and with flowers to about six inches from the 

 ground. They were of large size; between canary and sulphur in color, 

 well spaced on the stalk, and lasted well, remaining in bloom six weeks 

 or more. 



In spite of the very dry weather, they ripened their seed and slowly 

 dried off. The large leaves are very fine cut. Some pushed up growth 

 late this fall. Now we have heavy snow with the ground not frozen. 

 I expect them to do much better next year. Bloomed about a week 

 later than the blue hybrids, on the 29th of June here. — C. G. Bush. 

 Rochester, Minn. 



The "Bird's Egg" Strain of Geranium 



To the Editor The Garden Magazine: 



THERE are Geraniums and Geraniums, for every purpose almost, 

 according to the variety, but none has pleased me more than the 

 "Bird's Egg" strain in which my interest was first excited by the ap- 

 pearance in one of my yearly collection of catalogues of an especially 



